Motorola hasn't been shy with the apps as of late. They've published a handful of new ones in the last few weeks, most of which are exclusive to the multi-carrier Moto X and the new family of DROIDs for Verizon. The Skip app went live just a few hours ago, but the latest is possibly the phones' most visible feature, Touchless Control. It lets the new Motos react to voice while the phone screen is off with the command "OK Google Now."

Don't get excited: the app is absolutely and emphatically only for the Moto X, DROID Mini, DROID Ultra, and DROID MAXX. I'd be willing to bet that the only reason the Touchless Control app is on the Play Store at all is so that Motorola can address bugs and add functionality without waiting for carriers to send out their oft-delayed over-the-air updates. (Years of dealing with Verizon have taken their toll.) So far the only new Moto apps that have been compatible with other phones are the Motorola Migrate tool and a receiver app for Droid Zap.

Some think that the Touchless Control functionality will be coming to Android itself in a future update, mostly because of the way it mirrors some of the actions in Google Glass. We haven't seen any hard evidence of this, though Google is always working to expand Google Now, so there's reason to hope. If you'd like to get at least one of the new features from the Moto X and new DROIDs on your existing phone, check out ActiveNotifications.

Comments

im sure XDA or other hackers will make it work on all devices. wait and see :)

Nathan Borup

Only on devices with the snapdragon 800, otherwise it would be a battery drain

Razormike

The DROID Ultra and Mini don't have Snapdragon 800s, and the app is available to them. Maybe this one requires you to actually have the app open.

astasualle

Seriously?? This is an ignorant comment. so let me explain. Droid,Ultra,MotoX all has X8 chip which wont drain battery on this touchless control app because it has low voltage natural language processing core. The only other chip which has the same capacity is 800. if you use anyother phone it will drain battery

blix247

The question is by how much? It would be worth loading up on another phone to see the reduction in life on the phone. Is it 10%? 20%? 50%?

mapsave10

reduction by 60% according to Motorola

io53

Please stop calling these for 'cores' like they would be CPU cores. DSP's is not 'cores' in anything else than marketing.

David Margolin

so change the build.prop and we can get the functionality on any device?

CoreRooted

"Can we"? Yes. But, probably not the best idea seeing as how it would have to create a wakelock in order to keep listening for your voice and on non-X8 hardware, that would kill your battery pretty quick.

AdrienReive

If you need, there is the build.prop of Motorola Ulta HD. Report if it works! :)

Michael McGrade

Need the Moto Settings apk as well which will replace your current settings app.

I don't mind not having the always on voice commands, but I'd love an app that would let me shout commands on who to call and text when the phone is on while im driving. Hope someone can make that work with every phone.